


Keeping It Clean

by LerxstInSpace



Series: Broken Mirror-verse [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (yet), Alternate Reality Black Paladin Adam (Voltron), Established Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Flustered Adam (Voltron), Flustered Shiro (Voltron), M/M, No Sex, Scars, Showers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 01:15:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18216218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LerxstInSpace/pseuds/LerxstInSpace
Summary: Adam scooted into his cabin, left his glasses on the counter, shucked off his uniform and socks and underwear and let the bits fall where they might for now, raided his drawers for clean socks and underwear, and found one last clean uniform hanging up in the closet. Perfect. Hopefully he’d have time to run the dirty ones through the cleaner after this mission. He grabbed his towel, half-assedly wrapped it around his waist, slapped the panel to open the door to the bathroom he and Takashi shared, and--And found Takashi standing in his bathroom door, naked but for the towel around his waist, deer-in-headlights look in his eyes.Shit.[Yes, finally: the one where they're not Doing It yet but they kind of have to take a shower together.]





	Keeping It Clean

One hour. One hour until Adam’s butt had to be in Black-2’s pilot seat and ready to take off. It was the perfect time for a desperately-needed shower. 

 

Actually, no, it wasn’t the perfect time. It was far from the perfect time. But with Takashi likely either on the bridge or in the situation room right now, it was probably going to be the  _ only  _ time Adam would be able to sneak a shower in until after the mission.

 

It wasn’t like Adam had deliberately gone three-plus days without showering. He did his best to keep himself clean and presentable, even out here. But shit happened out in space and it happened at the most inconvenient possible times, and there was nothing to be done about it but brush your teeth, wash your face, shave, and put on another layer of deodorant and some clean socks and underwear and maybe Febreze your uniform and get back to work.

 

But no matter how many times Adam brushed his teeth or washed his face or changed his socks there always came a point where he just couldn’t stand it anymore, and he  _ had  _ to have an actual shower with soap and everything. His hair was a stringy, greasy mess and as he double-timed down the corridor to his cabin he hoped against all hope that the Sunday-at-a-comic-con funk he smelled wasn’t him.

 

He scooted into his cabin, left his glasses on the counter, shucked off his uniform and socks and underwear and let the bits fall where they might for now, raided his drawers for clean socks and underwear, and found one last clean uniform hanging up in the closet. Perfect. Hopefully he’d have time to run the dirty ones through the cleaner after this mission. He grabbed his towel, half-assedly wrapped it around his waist, slapped the panel to open the door to the bathroom he and Takashi shared, and--

 

And found Takashi standing in  _ his  _ bathroom door, naked but for the towel around his waist, deer-in-headlights look in his eyes.

 

_ Shit. _

 

They were still taking the physical stuff slow, and barging into the bathroom only to find Takashi in there wearing nothing but a towel was putting thoughts in Adam’s head that fell squarely into that category of conversational topics they’d been jokingly referring to as  _ borderline inappropriate.  _ But more importantly: they both needed to shower, neither of them had time to wait on the other to go first, so how the hell were they going to work this out? What was the protocol here?

 

“Uh,” Takashi said, and Adam tried like hell to stare at literally fucking  _ anything  _ other than the 8-pack Takashi never had in his reality. “I, uh... sorry, if you’d said something...”

 

“This is, um...” Adam cleared his throat.  _ Awkward, _ he meant to say, but was it really? It wasn’t really, which was kind of weird, but he wasn’t sure if that feeling was mutual and decided it was best to not assume it was. He looked up, tried not to notice the color Takashi’s face was turning, tried to focus on his hair. His floof hung limp and heavy in his face with a few renegade strands clinging to his forehead, and although Adam was grimly certain that he himself was responsible for some of the con dude funk hanging in the bathroom, he sure as hell wasn’t responsible for all of it. “It’s... it’s fine. I can wait until after the mission.”

 

“No, it’s--” Takashi shook his head and flapped a hand. “You’ve got the more, uh... physically demanding job? Go ahead. I’ll take one later.”

 

“You work in a lot closer quarters with a lot more people,” Adam pointed out. “Just me and Black-2 out there.”

 

“Huh... true.”

 

Neither of them said anything for a minute.

 

And then Adam realized just how pants-on-head ridiculous this all was.

 

“How many times have we seen each other naked?” he sighed, rubbing his forehead. 

 

Takashi reached up and scratched at the back of his head. “Well, technically, we haven’t?” 

 

He did have a point. They weren’t quite the same two people who had seen each other naked on a near-daily basis since they were cadets. Takashi did have those abs in this reality that he hadn’t had in Adam’s, and likewise Adam had some muscle that his counterpart in this reality hadn’t. And then there was the matter of the prosthetic arms, and then the scars, but... if they’d been through all the same horrible shit, they’d likely have a lot of the same scars, right? Not something Adam was particularly worried about. 

 

“I’m just saying,” Adam went on. “If you’re really not okay with it, then you go ahead because you objectively need a shower more than I do at this particular moment but otherwise... is there really a reason why we can’t be adults about this and share the damn thing?”

 

Takashi took a moment to chew that over. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Okay. We’ve... we’ve got our boundaries set and all. We can respect that. Right?”

 

“Right.”

 

“Okay.” Takashi reached into the shower and cranked the water on. 

 

And then he took off his towel and hung it on the hook by the door and ...oh. Oh. Oh  _ God.  _

 

Yes, that really was an exact copy. 

 

Yes, it really  _ did  _ all turn white.

 

Adam turned away and swallowed hard. He could feel his ears turning purple. He swore he could feel his eyeballs fogging up.  _ Adults. We are mature adults.  _

 

He took his own towel off and hung it on the hook by his door. Takashi made a weird little whimpery choking noise behind him, and when Adam turned around Takashi looked away quickly, crimson spreading across his nose and cheeks.

 

_ Adults, dammit. _

 

Best to just do the thing and be done with it. Adam pulled the curtain back and stepped in, and Takashi stepped in after him.

 

Once they were in there, it was fine. Once the water hit their skin, they both remembered that their priority was to get clean, and they were both able to focus on that and not make this any weirder than it had to be. They hardly spoke, aside from the occasional “‘scuse me” or “pass the soap” or whatever. They hardly touched, except to steady each other as they traded places to take turns under the spray.

 

“Gimme the shampoo?” Takashi asked Adam at one point. 

 

But when Adam turned to grab it off the little shelf, he heard Takashi hiss in a soft gasp and felt fingertips brush the right side of his abdomen, just under his rib cage, over the three long jagged scars there.

 

Adam shivered at the touch. His breath caught in his throat. He had a bottle of shampoo in his hand and for a second, he couldn’t remember why. 

 

“Haggar?” Takashi asked softly.

 

Adam nodded. But how did he know? Unless...  _ fuck. _

 

He held the bottle of shampoo out to Takashi, and Takashi took it. With that hand free, Adam brushed his fingers over the same spot on Takashi’s side. He found the same pattern of scars there, and Takashi shut his eyes and let out a shaky breath when Adam touched them.

 

Adam didn’t like to think about how he’d gotten those. She’d almost killed him--he still didn’t remember how exactly he got away with his life. It was one of those things he still had nightmares about, one of the worst things that had happened to him in his reality. 

 

And Takashi had the same scars, likely gotten the same way.

 

The thought made Adam feel a little sick. It also kind of made him want to singlehandedly hunt Haggar down and pay her back for what she’d put the both of them through.

 

But this wasn’t the time or the place to think about that. He had a mission to fly in about half an hour and the hot water wasn’t going to last forever.

 

“You done with that?” he asked Takashi instead, indicating the shampoo. But as Takashi handed him the bottle, he glanced up at Takashi’s sudsy hair and... oh, he shouldn’t, this was definitely pushing their boundaries, but he just couldn’t resist...

 

Adam reached up, corralled Takashi’s lather-laden floof in his curled flesh-and-blood hand, and gently pulled up and out, leaving the hair standing up like a horn. “Beautiful,” he said.

 

“Wh--really?” Takashi tried to look up, but of course his eyes didn’t bend that way. “You really just Shampoo Unicorned me?”

 

Adam grinned and lathered up his own hair, and he laughed when he felt Takashi’s hands tug it up into his own pair of shampoo antlers.

 

* * *

 

“There,” Adam said after Takashi turned the water off and claimed his towel. “That wasn’t so weird, was it?”

 

“Nah.” Takashi scrubbed at his hair, drying it as best he could with the towel alone, and then he wrapped the towel around his waist. “Oh. Shit. Hey, can I borrow a pair of socks? I’m out.”

 

Adam wrapped his towel back around his waist and waved Takashi into his cabin. “Top drawer. Help yourself. You want to do some laundry later if the shit’s done hitting the fan after this mission?”

 

“Eeh.” Takashi opened Adam’s sock drawer and grimaced--Adam had a couple of clean pairs left, but he was perilously close to running out himself. “Yeah... probably a good idea.”

 

“‘Kay.” Adam stepped aside to let Takashi back into his cabin and stopped him for a quick kiss before he went through the door. “See you when I get back.”

 

Takashi grinned and stepped back, looking him over and trying to look like he wasn’t. “You bet.”

 

* * *

 

Later, after the mission, after he gave his debrief report, after he stopped by Takashi’s office for a post-mission hug that for the first time in three days didn’t leave him wondering which of them smelled like  _ that _ ...

 

Adam lay in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying that shower over and over in his mind, pondering what might have happened if there hadn’t been a mission to fly or if they’d had a better supply of hot water or they hadn’t been taking the physical stuff quite so slow.

 

Thinking was all he’d be doing for now, but thinking was nice. Very nice.

 

He also took a moment to think about what a striking shampoo unicorn horn Takashi’s white hair made now, and he fell asleep with the biggest, goofiest grin on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been wanting to write this since forever, y'all. Figured since the "overprotective Shiro" monster fic I'm working on makes reference to the glowing alien wound and scars thereof at one point, this would be a good time to bang this out.


End file.
